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This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Celia Hatton. On Tuesday 13th January, these are our main stories. In Iran, thousands are feared to have been killed by government forces with the partial restoration of phone services. Iranians have been describing violent crackdowns on anti democracy protests in their initial calls abroad. The French far right politician Marine Le Pen has begun her appeal against a two year prison sentence and a ban on standing for public office. Also in this podcast, my gut is.
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Equivalent to an Italian man five years older than me.
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Could good gut health be the key to living longer? Let's begin in Iran we where a total communications blackout appears to be lifting. Telling us more about the unprecedented anti government street protests that led to a deadly crackdown by the authorities. Some people inside Iran are now making phone contact with people outside the country and that's helping us to fill in the picture on what's been happening since the Internet was shut down. Several days ago, this Iranian woman in London had a brief telephone conversation with a relative.
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A family member called me around sort of half ten and very, very brief call.
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They just called to say that they're.
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Safe, they and their wife are safe and that was it. They're in the north of Iran, so they're in an area called Gorgon just north of Tehran, quite kind of on the outskirts of the town, so quite rural area. And they said that basically everyone's been killed. And I asked do they personally know people? And they said family members, colleagues, neighbors, like, you know, in every household that's happening. And they had just called to say they're safe. Very brief call, got off the phone.
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Also just told me that they had told their daughter, who I know.
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So yeah, and that was it.
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The Reuters news agency says an Iranian official has told them that about 2,000 people have been killed, including security personnel. And we're hearing about executions too. This from Jeremy Lawrence, a spokesman for the UN's human rights office.
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It is extremely worrying to see public statements by some judicial officials indicating the possibility of the death penalty being used against protesters through expedited judicial proceedings. The High Commissioner stresses that Iranians have the right to demonstrate peacefully. Their grievances need to be heard and addressed and not instrumentalised by. By anyone.
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So what's the latest about the numbers killed and arrested? Jayar gol is from BBC Persian.
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Human rights groups say somewhere around 650 people have been killed, but this number is more before the Internet blackout, before people could contact us, give us name and even we in BBC Persian were able to be for the Internet blockout, find some of those families, talk about them, get the story of those people who have been killed and identify, fight some of the victims. But this time in the past four days, we believe the lethal force used against protesters is unprecedented. Doctors, surgeons, nurses, ambulance drivers, they get in touch to us from hospital small and large from the capital Tehran, or small city and large across the country. We received so many messages, but all of them they had something in common. Our hospitals are overwhelmed with young men and women with shotgun wounds. Our morgues have been piled up with the bodies of young men and women. The protesters and also the footages we have seen one clip, somebody managed to send it to us. We counted in the street of Tehran in one clip, in a matter of few seconds, 350 shots was heard gunshot. It sound like a live ammunition.
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So you're saying we have unprecedented numbers, you believe, of people killed. We're also hearing reports now that communications are coming back online, some communications are coming back online of swift executions, executions that have been carried out and plans for more. What more can you tell us?
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We know numbers of people, scores of people have been drowned out in different places around the country. In one case, Irrfan Sultan, a young man, he has been arrested last week. He has been convicted to death and there is a fear by human rights group his execution might be carried out on Wednesday. So this is a kind of, I think regime wants to execute those people who are protesting showing the iron fist.
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So what is the appetite then for future protests?
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I think if we judge this protest with the previous one, we had numbers of them, just one of them. Three years ago, almost regime collapsed. And this time around it, it was much more widespread than the last one. I think eventually when we look at the regime, regime is internationally isolated at home, losing legitimacy even amongst those small percentage supporting the regime.
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We're really hearing some strong words from foreign leaders. The German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said we are now witnessing the final days and weeks of the Iranian regime.
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I think that's a lot of people hoping for that. But I don't think at this point of time we are and the turning point because the regime so far has been quashing and crushing the protesters and even allowing people using phone it sound. They feel confident they have controlled it. And one thing we know, they don't hesitate to shoot if they feel their existence is in danger.
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Jayar Gol from BBC Persian. People inside Iran are cautious about speaking out. But there are Iranians outside the country who are willing to talk open. Jafar Panahy is one of Iran's best known film directors. Last year he won the prestigious Palme d' or at the Cannes Film Festival for his drama It Was Just an Accident, which tells the story of a group of former political prisoners trying to decide whether to exact revenge on someone they believe to be their tormentor.
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Machine.
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Jafar Panahy made the film in Iran without permission. He's also been imprisoned several times by the regime. He's currently in the United States, where he attended Sunday night's Golden Globe Awards. Speaking through his translator, he told the BBC's North America correspondent, Gary O', Donoghue, how he'd watched the latest scenes of violence in Iran as he traveled by car to the ceremony.
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Unfortunately, what I saw was unbelievable. There was bloodshed and I saw bodies on the ground. The state police had gunned down protesters and they had done it with the intention of murder, not with the intention of dispersing the crowds because there are army bullets used. And we know that when that happens, it is only for the intention of killing families who were looking for their loved ones within. The bodies of the protesters were completely shocked. We were stuck in the car, in the traffic on the way to the Globes and before heading there, while we were sitting on the line to get in, I really could not say anything. I could not get out of the car. And once we finally Got out. I couldn't do anything I had in mind and I couldn't say anything because I was completely distressed.
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You have in the past few days, along with other members of the artistic community, you have publicly come out and condemned what the regime are doing. But you also plan to return to the country. That must put you at enormous risk.
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I really don't understand what risk means here when people are out and giving their lives and sacrificing their lives for what they need. Anything I do is not any different. I had said the same thing four months ago. I had said that I will return under any circumstances.
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You've been in prison before. There is another prison sentence awaiting you when you get back. Are you resigned to be put back in prison?
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When you make a film in Iran and you will not accept censorship, there is a price that comes with it. And myself and other filmmakers have accepted that price. And this is one of them. We have other filmmakers who are currently in prison. Mohammad Murizod, the documentary filmmaker, has been in prison for several years. And this is not just something that is about me.
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Why do you think it is that the authorities allow you to travel outside the country, given their opposition to your artistic work in particular, Unhoj is an elderly man.
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They did not allow me to leave. They had given me a sentence that banned me from leaving Iran for 15 to 16 years. And I served that sentence. And then they had not seen the film itself before I traveled.
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What role do you think artists like yourself have when it comes to these hugely traumatic political situations with protesters on the streets?
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Artists have always been together with people. They have always been standing with people, many of whom in the Cinema circle were supporting people in their demands for the Women Life Freedom movement. And as far as I could follow the news, while being outside Iran, I also have been seeing artists standing with people.
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This time, Iranian film director Jafar Panahe to Paris now, where a crucial court case has now opened that could determine the political future of the far right leader Marie Le Pen. This appeal will decide whether she can run in next year's French presidential election. Ms. Le Pen is challenging her criminal conviction for misusing European parliamentary funds to pay party staff. She was considered to be a prime contender for the 2020 an election until she was barred from running for public office. So what is the basis for her appeal? Our correspondent in Paris is Hugh Scofield.
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Her lawyers from the start said that the conviction at the original trial was wrong. They said that what she'd done was was not a crime and was not organized in the same way, their fallback position will be that even if it was a crime, the sentence was disproportionate and too strong. So that's what they'll be arguing in court. I think there will be probably a different kind of tack taken by her legal team this time, different from the first trial. There they went in all guns blazing and were very much intended to politicize the trial and claim that Marine Le Pen was the victim of a kind of political holdup to stop her running for office. I think everyone agrees that that backfired. That made it much less likely that the court was going to be lenient with her. So I suspect we'll see a more emollient legal case made by her team now in the hope that the sentence is reduced even if she's not acquitted.
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And tell us more about Marine Le Pen's current popularity and that of her party.
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Well, I mean, it's very, very interesting, very stark. I mean, they are the biggest party in France. You know, we'd never have thought of this being the case 20 years ago, 10 years ago, even now. But National Rally, the hard right, populist right, far right, call it what you will, is now the biggest party in France. And that's why this was such a big deal. Because when she was convicted last year and then told that you will not be able to run for the presidency, it was interpreted by her camp as being an attempt to stifle her. She even compared herself to Nelson Mandela, an attempt by, you know, the pals that be to keep out the rising force in French politics. Now, this appeal has been arranged and accelerated in order to produce a result in time for the next elections. And if she succeeds in getting the sentence reduced, she will be able to run. But, you know, there is for the National Rally this backup plan, which is her number two, Jourdan Bardella, running in her place. And the extraordinary thing about the story is that he, even though he's only 30 and is not a Le Pen and has no experience, appears to be just as popular with the electorate as she is. So, you know, it's an important trial, but the party does have a plan.
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B. Hugh Schofield in Paris. Now, could having a healthy gut be the key to living longer? That's a bit of a hot question these days. You don't have to stray too far on social media to find an influencer promoting a product that claims to maintain good bacteria. And many supermarkets now stock a range of products from kimchi to kefir that promise to Nourish our gut. Some have dismissed all this as a passing fad. However, increasingly some doctors think our gut microbiomes affect a whole spectrum of things from mental health to cancer prevention and could hold the key to aging. Well, I spoke to Our Health editor, Hugh Pym, who's been looking into all this, and asked him if there was a link between gut health and aging.
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Well, Celia, that is a question that is being asked increasingly by people in this field. And I should say, as you pointed out, this was seen at one time as a fashionable thing to do. There were influences promoting products and there was some skepticism, cynicism even, about the whole thing. But I was very struck coming into this story that there were senior consultants in Britain's National Health Service who were clinical experts who were. One of them described himself as a microbiome evangelist. What they do say, though, is to find a scientific proof that good gut health leads to aging is just not possible at the moment. But there are a number of studies that lead them in that direction. There's this fascinating story about a 117-year-old woman in Spain, and scientists were able, through tests and to look at her diet to come to the conclusion that as well as having a healthy Mediterranean diet, she had three portions of yogurt each day. And of course, yogurt is seen as a probiotic and very important part of the microbiome. And there was another study in China which showed that centenarians had a better gut diversity, more diverse microbiome. Incidentally, these are the microorganisms, trillions of them in our gut, bacteria and fungi and so on. So there's an increasing move in this direction without anyone quite being able to say, yes, you'll get a very long life if you have a good diet. But they are taking it very seriously. And of course, it speaks to an agenda for older people who may become frail. One expert in geriatric medicine told me that actually having the right diet for an older patient who might become more vulnerable could be a very important part of their well being.
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So you've really thrown yourself into this story though, haven't you? You had your gut microbiome analyzed by St. Mary's Hospital in London. What was that experience like?
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Well, it was interesting. It was a bit scary. I mean, to get to the gory details, it involved a poo sample being sent in and analyzed in a laboratory. I mean, anyone who's done tests for bowel cancer will know about that. It's pretty straightforward. It is. Then. It was then examined by Dr. James Kinross, who's a professor at Imperial College London and a clinician at St. Mary's Hospital, incidentally, where Penn penicillin was invented in London. And he basically said, I've analyzed your microbiome after the lab tests and you're okay. You're not doing too bad. Now. One reason I did this is because I'm in my 60s and a grandparent, and the general view is the microbiome is pretty stable for most of the decades leading up to that. And in fact, experts say it's probably not worth people having it tested if they're younger than me. But given, given where I am and the possibility of the biome degrading over the next few decades. I did the test and I'll give you, I'll give you one more result. Apparently it is actually something that could be improved. My gut is equivalent to an Italian man five years older than me who was on the Mediterranean diet.
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Our health editor Hugh Pym. Still to come in this podcast using AI to develop new drugs.
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We're hoping we can develop medicines much faster and much more effectively than humans can ever do by using computers.
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Russia has launched another intensive night of airstrikes across the country. The most damaging impact appears to have been Kharkiv on the eastern frontier with Russia, where at least four people were killed, dozens injured, but there were also injuries as far south as Odessa, the port in the south, the strategically important port, and also the city of Kryvy? Ri in the center of Ukraine and here in Kyiv in the capital. So another night of intense Russian attacks using drones, missiles, even cruise missiles, reportedly, but particularly, says the Ukrainian government, Russia seems to be targeting Ukraine's critical infrastructure. Things like power stations, port facilities, gas distribution points, and all of this, of course, the aim is to weaken not just Ukrainian resolve, but actually weaken the power supply, energy supplies, electricity supplies across the country. And this is coupled with a very, very severe winter here in Ukraine. Here in Kyiv, temperatures today are well below minus 10 degrees centigrade. So, you know, with power outages, shortages of some basics, and with the cold, it makes things very difficult for the residents of the city.
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Just a miserable time for many people in Ukraine then. How are the Ukrainians responding militarily?
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Well, the front in the winter doesn't tend to change much on the ground because of the severe conditions on the ground. But both sides are attacking each other. It must be said that Ukraine also seems to be targeting key Russian infrastructure in Russian cities close to the border, particularly oil depots and other points where Russian weaponry or energy facilities may be kept. So much of the activity seems to be in the skies, either with drones or with missiles. The impact here in Kyiv is that many parts of the city, particularly on the left flank of the river Dnipro, which runs through the city, thousands of homes are left without energy, without electricity. Critical infrastructure like hospitals and schools have to be provided with diesel generators and sometimes there aren't even enough of those to go around. So, you know, the battle is being fought mainly in the air at the minute, but the impact on the ground in cities like Kyiv is quite distressing for many people.
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Weira Davis in Kyiv. Now to news of a significant development in the case against the former president of South Korea, Yun Sung Yol, who's facing insurrection charges. Prosecutors have demanded the death penalty for Mr. Yoon over his failed imposition of martial law in December 2024. They've accused him of being motivated by a lust for power aimed at dictatorship and long term rule. Our correspondent in Seoul is Jake Kwon.
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Mr. Yoon is facing multitude of charges, but the most serious one here is of course leading an insurrection. He is being accused of leading a coup d' etat in December 2024 by sending the troops into the nation's parliament and then trying to arrest the lawmakers there. The special prosecutors have asked for death penalty for Mr. Yun as well as life imprisonment for his chief of military and 30 year sentence for the military officer who is considered the architect of the nitty gritty details of this alleged insurrection. Now, this is of course a country that had practically abolished the death penalty. They haven't carried out death penalty since the 90s. But the prosecutors, they are arguing that it is necessary for the judge to give him the highest penalty that the South Korean law allows so that they can make an example of and make sure that no other leader follows in Mr. Yoon's footsteps. Later they pointed out that that they need to also look at a precedence of the last military dictator in South Korea who was given a death penalty 30 years ago and then commuted to life sentence later. They were saying that because that did not prevent this coup d' etat from happening, that they need to even take a more severe penalty against Mr. Yun here and that they're seeking that this is very much necessary. Now, we are not going to hear the verdict until next month. That is when it's expected to arrive. But even if he is found guilty of the death penalty here and given the death penalty by the judge, the most likely outcome here is of course, life in prison.
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Jake Kwon in South Korea well, like many countries in Europe, the Netherlands is facing a housing shortage. The country needs around 400,000 homes. The party that won the most votes in the recent general election D66 had a bold new proposal pledging to build 10 new cities. Despite the squeeze on accommodation, the authorities are using the law to try to protect tenants and stop the spiralling cost of renting. Linda Presley reports. In the port city of Rotterdam, we.
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Cross the Erasmus Bridge to the south.
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Side, taking in the glitzy new builds. Among Rotterdam's recently constructed tower blocks are the old terraced homes. Four story brick buildings. And it's outside one of these we meet Sebastian Oscam, a senior housing inspector for the city who's arranged to visit a family living in the the top of top floor attic.
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It looks like they pay a certain amount from the rental contract, but they also pay under the table an amount to the landlord. Extra.
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Oh dear.
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Yeah. Also there were the. The rental contract is for one year and that's not allowed in Holland.
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Temporary contracts are not allowed anymore.
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Most temporary rental contracts were banned in the Netherlands in 2024 to give tenants stability and to stop landlords raising rents. At the end of a typical two year contract, a teenage girl opens the front door. So we're going up one of these.
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Very steep Dutch staircases, quite crumbly.
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There's no railing here, so be careful.
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Yeah. Okay. There's just a child safety gate right at the top of the stairs. No front door to the attic space. A small one bedroom flat where a family of five lives. The tenant brings his contract. He and his family arrived from Bulgaria eight years ago. Sebastian checks the paperwork, then calls a translator. Because a man doesn't speak good Dutch, she explains to the tenant that his one year rental contract isn't legal.
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So we were just giving him the information about the new law and what his rights are in this.
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Okay, so how much rent are they paying here?
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They are paying 850 according to the contract and we're gonna just confirm, but last time we heard that they're paying like around 1500. So part of it would be under the table. Yes, exactly. Yeah.
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They're paying €1500 per month. If the flat was assessed as being good for occupation, which is doubtful, this would be way too much under laws that cap rent. Sebastian wants to help to put the landlord on notice and get a fair rent for this family. But the tenant doesn't want Sebastian to get involved.
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Tenant told us he, even if we try to enforce, he's scared for the landlord.
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He's scared of the landlord?
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Yeah, he's scared that even if we lower the rent, he's gonna come by again and in person demand more money. They're already looking for another place, which is not easy. Housing crisis.
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Sebastian plans to tackle the landlord once he has all the facts outside.
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I ask him if this family paying €1500 just for a pokey one bed flat is as bad as it gets in Rotterdam.
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No, no. We have people that rent a room for that same amount a room. And a lot of people, they don't know the law. They don't know their rights.
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Property developers and landlords complain. The Netherlands. Affordable rent laws and the end of temporary rental contracts, together with the tax they pay, mean they can't get a return on their investments. But at Rotterdam's City Hall, Chantal Zeichers, the vice mayor responsible for housing, pushes back.
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We need laws to enforce good landlordship.
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How much of a problem are bad.
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Landlords here in the city? Yeah, I have to emphasize that not.
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Every landlord is a villain.
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There are also good landlords. But before we had this law on affordable housing, the law of affordable rent, we had seen so many, so many bad situations for tenants in one area. We have seen that the average amount of rent they asked too much was like €500 per month more than the.
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Actual capped rent should be.
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Yeah, yeah. So that's really bad.
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Deputy Mayor of Rotterdam, Chantal Zayers ending that report by Linda Pressley.
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And last, we're hoping we can develop medicines much faster and much more effectively than humans can ever do by using computers.
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That's Dr. Oliver Vance, co founder of Basecamp Research. He says his biotech company has developed the world's biggest genome database. It's using artificial intelligence models to create new treatments for things like cancer and autoimmune diseases. Currently, the vast majority of new therapies developed by scientists don't make it through the testing stage. Dr. Vance told my colleague Nick Robinson how he hoped his company's research could change that and revolutionize the way drugs are made.
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What we're hoping to do is build AI systems that can understand disease biology sufficiently to design medicines straight into clinic. So ultimately, to have a system where you can tell it the disease, you can tell it what's wrong, and it will design you a medicine and ideally a cure for that treatment. Now, the key to the success of any AI model, a specialist AI model, is a vast database. What is it that you're feeding into it in order to have any hope that it can achieve that aim. So the starting premise of Basecamp was that we don't know anywhere near enough about the vast majority of life on Earth. So far, more than 99% of life on Earth is completely unknown. 70% of everything we know is from five species. And so Basecamp set out to change this. We've built partnerships in 28 countries, 150 different locations, that is, you know, the rainforest, the Arctic, volcanoes under the ocean, to basically look for the rest of the species. So far, we've discovered over a million new species previously unknown to science and use them to train huge AI models that are starting to understand evolution, understand life, and to use that to design medicine. So in other fields of AI, they train on the entire Internet. If you want to write a poem with a new AI model, you train on the entire Internet and then ask it to write a poem. You don't train on a hundred thousand poems. And so the analogy is same here. So if we train on the Internet of life, you know, the Wikipedia of life on Earth, effectively, if we can understand that, we can access that, then these models, they have amazing the ability to learn and to generate new ideas from having learned enough of that information. To be clear though, it is a bet, isn't it? You can't be sure until the results come out the other end. That's exactly, exactly the point. And that's why we're so excited with the results we've released today. So this is the first AI model, we've called it eden, that designs therapeutic candidates directly from a disease prompt in lots of different disease areas. This is cancer, genetic disease, autoimmune disease, infections, where you basically type in something to do with the disease and out comes a therapeutic candidate. And most excitingly of all, in all the lab tests we've run, it has near 100% success rate at designing something that works first time in the lab. Anyone who's used AI, even rather basically, as part of a search engine, will know the danger of what is called hallucination. But in other words, what looks like a plausible answer and it turns out to be nonsense, do you have that same risk for us? It's not a risk for us. It's a super exciting invention. Right. So a plausible answer that sounds good, sounds realistic, and could work when we test them in the lab. And you get near 100% success, honestly, if it's developing new antibiotics that we've never seen before, don't know anything like we've ever heard of, but they're working. What matters for the patient, what matters for humanity, is that it's working.
B
Dr. Oliver Vance from Basecamp Research. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later, and for one story in depth that gives you the backstory story behind the headlines. Search for our sister podcast, the Global Story, wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk you can also find us on X@BBC World Service. Use the hashtag global newspod. This edition was mixed by Jack Wilfin. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Celia Hatton. Until next time. Goodbye. If you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Granger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-granger clickgranger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
Host: Celia Hatton (BBC World Service)
Date: January 13, 2026
This episode delivers a comprehensive roundup of global headlines, focusing on the partial restoration of phone services in Iran amid widespread anti-government protests and a violent governmental response. Key reports include firsthand accounts from inside Iran, international reactions, and expert analysis of the broader implications. Additional segments cover legal developments relating to Marine Le Pen in France, gut health research, Russia’s winter attacks on Ukraine, the South Korea former president’s insurrection trial, the housing crisis in the Netherlands, and innovations in AI-driven drug discovery.
[03:10] The UN Human Rights Office, via spokesman Jeremy Lawrence, expresses concern over expedited executions:
"It is extremely worrying to see public statements by some judicial officials indicating the possibility of the death penalty being used against protesters through expedited judicial proceedings."
(Jeremy Lawrence, 03:27)
Human rights groups estimate around 650 people killed before the internet blackout. BBC Persian suggests the real number could be much higher due to unprecedented use of lethal force and inability to confirm casualties during the blackout.
Hospitals in Iran are reported to be "overwhelmed with young men and women with shotgun wounds," and morgues "piled up with bodies of protesters."
(Jayar Gol, BBC Persian, 04:01)
"They don't hesitate to shoot if they feel their existence is in danger."
(Jayar Gol, 06:48)
Famed Iranian director Jafar Panahi reflects on scenes of bloodshed:
"There was bloodshed and I saw bodies on the ground. The state police had gunned down protesters ... it is only for the intention of killing."
(Jafar Panahi, via translator, 08:26)
On the risks of returning to Iran:
"I really don't understand what risk means here when people are out and giving their lives ... Anything I do is not any different."
(Jafar Panahi, 09:47)
He emphasizes the commitment of artists to stand with the people and support the "Women Life Freedom" movement.
(11:35)
[12:00]
"National Rally ... is now the biggest party in France."
(Hugh Schofield, Paris, 13:44)
[14:53]
Discussion of increasing scientific focus on the link between gut health and aging, moving beyond influencer trends.
Anecdotes of the world's oldest people, like a "117-year-old woman in Spain" with a probiotic-rich diet, are contrasted with ongoing skepticism over direct causality.
"There are senior consultants ... who describe themselves as microbiome evangelists."
(Hugh Pym, Health Editor, 15:44)
Personal experience: Hugh Pym, aged over 60, had his gut microbiome analyzed. Result:
"My gut is equivalent to an Italian man five years older than me who was on the Mediterranean diet."
(Hugh Pym, 18:56)
[21:54]
"Russia seems to be targeting Ukraine's critical infrastructure ... the aim is to weaken not just Ukrainian resolve, but actually weaken the power supply."
(Wyre Davies, Kyiv, 22:09)
[24:40]
[26:13]
The Netherlands faces severe housing shortages and a governmental push for affordable housing laws.
Authorities crack down on illegal contracts and exploitative landlords, but many tenants fear landlord retribution and lack legal knowledge.
"They are paying €1500 according to the contract and we're gonna just confirm, but last time we heard that they're paying around 1500. So part of it would be under the table."
(Sebastian Oscam, Rotterdam, 28:26)
"We need laws to enforce good landlordship."
(Chantal Zeichers, Rotterdam vice-mayor, 30:01)
[30:54]
“What we're hoping to do is build AI systems that can understand disease biology sufficiently to design medicines straight into clinic.”
(Oliver Vance, 31:26)
"Everyone's been killed."
(Iranian woman’s family member, 02:33)
"It is extremely worrying to see public statements ... the death penalty being used against protesters through expedited judicial proceedings." (Jeremy Lawrence, UN Human Rights, 03:27)
“Our hospitals are overwhelmed with young men and women with shotgun wounds … morgues piled up with bodies.”
(Jayar Gol, BBC Persian, 04:01)
“There was bloodshed and I saw bodies on the ground. The state police had gunned down protesters … it is only for the intention of killing.”
(Jafar Panahi, 08:26)
“National Rally ... is now the biggest party in France.”
(Hugh Schofield, Paris, 13:44)
“My gut is equivalent to an Italian man five years older than me who was on the Mediterranean diet.”
(Hugh Pym, 18:56)
“Russia seems to be targeting Ukraine's critical infrastructure ... the aim is to weaken not just Ukrainian resolve, but actually weaken the power supply.”
(Wyre Davies, Kyiv, 22:09)
“They are paying €1500 ... so part of it would be under the table.”
(Sebastian Oscam, 28:26)
“What we're hoping to do is build AI systems that can understand disease biology sufficiently to design medicines straight into clinic.”
(Oliver Vance, 31:26)
The episode maintains the BBC’s factual, impartial, and measured tone, with moments of empathy, especially in segments discussing personal loss and hardship. Direct testimonies from affected individuals and expert analysis provide both gravitas and immediacy to the unfolding news.
This episode of the Global News Podcast gives a gripping, on-the-ground view of unfolding crises—especially in Iran—while also providing global context through coverage of major political, social, and scientific stories. The reporting is bolstered by firsthand accounts, expert insight, and a clear focus on the human impact of global events.